Buckminster Fuller: Poet of Geometry

April 24, 2013

Author:

Cole Gerst

WHAT: A full color book about the life and work of one of the greatest minds of our times, Buckminster Fuller. Features hundreds of illustrations and contains over 15,000 words. The book covers important events of Fuller’s life from the day he was born.

All of his important designs, inventions and contributions are covered from the “jitterbug transformation” to his most famous invention, the geodesic dome. The book also contains a look into friendships and collaborations with such people as Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Einstein, Charles Eames, George Nelson & Isamu Noguchi.

WHY: Buckminster Fuller has been a huge inspiration to me, not only because of his designs and inventions, but also for his approach to creativity and his dedication to humankind.

I have read every book I could get my hands on by and about Buckminster Fuller, I’ve watched hours of old video interviews and speeches and have scoured the internet and archives for any other information I can get a hold of.

Fuller’s ideas and work can be complex and a little bit out there for many to digest. Many of the books on him are older and mostly in black and white. I felt that bringing in my style of colorful illustration would help introduce some people to this important person in a much more digestible way. I wanted to make a beautiful book honoring this man that could be enjoyed by everyone from kids to adults.

I approached The Estate of Buckminster Fuller & The Buckminster Fuller Institute with my idea for this book. They hold all the copyrights and patents to Bucky’s work and even have the copyright on his quotes.

The estate includes Fuller’s daughter and grandson. They loved the idea of my book and gave me their blessing. I have been consulting them throughout the process for about a year now. They will give the final approval before the book goes to print.

WHEN: I started working on this book in early 2012 and I hope to have it finished, printed and available by late 2013.

Comments (10)

Buckminster Fuller’s “Dymaxion House” Makes the Case for a Classically Liberal (Libertarian) Philosophy, and System of Government:

Buckminster Fuller designed a flood-proof, earthquake-proof house that was to surround a central beam like the cap of a mushroom on a stalk. This, he called his “Dymaxion House.” The central beam is like the stalk, and the living area is like the cap of the mushroom. Along the outermost edge of the “cap” there were to be cables anchoring the cap to the ground (or surroundings), and distributing tension. In a community, the “caps” could all be anchored to one another, ultra-efficiently distributing the force of hurricane winds. One such house was built, and displayed for many years at Epcott center. When the metal stairs had been partly worn away by the excessive foot traffic, a wrecking ball was brought in to demolish the house. It bounced off. The house had to be cut apart with cutting torches.

So how does this house make the case for a libertarian philosophy? The necessity of “function and form” over “normal conformist form only.” The people of New Orleans, and several investors in New Orleans, rejected the building of these houses in the New Orleans flood plain, on the grounds that they “were ugly” or “too unconventional” (Wikipedia displays a more sophisticated sophism for this kind of stupidity “Criticisms of the Dymaxion Houses include its supposed inflexible design which completely disregarded local site and architectural idiom”) Basically, the house was never deployed because of anti-liberty zoning regulations, and the desire to maintain the stupid designs based on inferior building materials of the past. The majority of the genius of the Dymaxion house was its ECONOMIC genius: if deployed in sufficient numbers, the “expensive, high energy” cost of the house would be diminished by immense economies of scale, since the house was designed to be manufactured like airplane wings are manufactured.

New Orleans was destroyed in 2006 by Hurricane Katrina. The widespread deployment of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House would have eliminated most of the destruction caused by Katrina, and reduced the harm to the infrastructure (if your garden is destroyed, you can still go to work. If your bedroom is destroyed and your house unlivable, you wind up in an Astrodome in Houston).

The Deployment of the Dymaxion House prior to 2006 in New Orleans would have prevented the loss of life, quality of life, and property that the U. S. taxpayer and insurance companies were ultimately on the hook for. It would have also allowed the continued economic vitality of the region to continue, uninterrupted.

So, to save a few million on initial investment (which would later be recouped on deployment), and to avoid the destructive and cost-exploding political interference from local authoritarian zoning bureaucrats, billions of dollars of preventable damage (and far more in lost opportunity costs) was done to New Orleans in 2006.

I hope the “aesthetics” of your colonial-era-design slave plantations was worth it, you Luddite morons! (And I hope all the future Katrina’s are also worth the shackles of “zoning” and “authoritarianism for its own sake.” I personally believe that the “eyesore” of of a beautiful, bio-inspired house is far less than the “eyesore” of a crocodile feeding on human flesh, but maybe that’s just my liberal “political” sensibilities talking. Laugh out loud.)

The Dymaxion House would have allowed New Orleans residents to sit safe and sound in their indestructible, watertight, manufactured houses, if they were adopted with any significant economy of scale. The houses would have risen with the flood waters, and prevented the contamination of the water supply with human sewage (the Dymaxion House separated urine and feces, purifying and recycling the water, and composting the feces and nitrates from the urine into fertilizer.). But rational arguments didn’t prevail, and neither did individual freedom.

From the prior linked article:
“The word “Dymaxion” was coined by combining parts of three of Bucky’s favorite words: DY (dynamic), MAX (maximum), and ION (tension). The house used tension suspension from a central column or mast, sold for the price of a Cadillac, and could be shipped worldwide in its own metal tube. Toward the end of WW II, Fuller attempted to create a new industry for mass-producing Dymaxion Houses.”

If the world was just a little smarter, just a little more socially tolerant (politically “liberal”), Fuller would have succeeded, and we’d all be richer for it.

One final note: systemic economic wealth is difficult to quantify, but we shouldn’t ignore the fact that it appears that the wealth of the system would be immensely greater, if we were freer. The most obvious way in which we’d be better off pertains to health, because the time that life-saving treatments are forcibly kept off the market is quantifiable when the FDA and AMA finally “approve” them. However, in the case of designs that were not implemented due to governmental restrictions, a tiny portion of the cost of tyranny is quantifiable. By all honest measures, it is immense.

My long term hero..doing more with less..closest packing of spheres..tensegrity..dymaxion cars..waterless toilets, self cleaning bathrooms, cities floating on the sea and dome homes delivered by helicopter.

I look forward to seeing the resulting work. I hope it includes something of Synergetics. This has to be his largest contribution though it remains little understood even by mathematicians. It’s a profound vision of the fundamental nature of the world. I’ve seen parts of it show up in the work of several visionary physicists. I made extensive notes on the 2 texts which I’ve sadly lost.